Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

IT HAD BEEN a mistake.

That was all Mark could think as he made his way home from the competition, his long strides sending up clouds of dust around him. He forced himself to keep to a walk, even though he wanted to run, to put as much distance as he could between himself and what had just happened.

Rationally, logically, he knew that it was the sort of slip that anyone might make. Mrs. Farleigh was a widow, not some virginal miss. It had been nothing but a kiss—a heady kiss, to be sure, but he’d not shoved her against a tree as he’d wanted. He’d not flung her to the ground and lifted her skirts. He hadn’t even let his hands stray past her waist, and he’d wanted to drink her in.

It was just a kiss. A flirtation gone too far. If he’d been any other man, he’d have enjoyed the feel of her lips on his and then thought nothing more of the matter.

But Mark knew himself better. For him, it had been a catastrophe.

He’d lost his head before, and he hated the feeling. He knew what it was like to act without thinking, to have no control over what came next. It felt like close kin to madness, plain and simple. And he had seen what madness could do.

His mother, in her madness, had beaten his brothers. She’d done good works, yes, but she’d also nearly killed his brother.

He didn’t fear that he would become mad. He’d never detected the slightest propensity toward unreason in himself. Still, he hated the feeling of rage overtaking him, hated the feeling of want overpowering his intellect. It reminded him that no matter what he did, a piece of his mother had lodged inside him. He’d inherited a fragment of her temperament alongside her hair and her eyes.

As he’d grown older, he’d watched his mother ossify into a shell of a woman, nothing to her but rage and anger. He’d eaten porridge throughout his childhood, too; today, he could no longer stomach oats. He’d developed a distaste for excess emotion to go along with his dislike for gruel.

Mark had thought about his ideal wife before. He’d not yet found her, not in the myriad subdued and pliable debutantes that had been pushed his way. Mark’s ideal wife was intelligent. She would be a perfect companion: clever enough that he would never tire of her company, outspoken enough that she did not simply bow to his whims. She would challenge and confront him when necessary.

But there was another, more important component to this wistful dream. He wanted a woman who would calm him. She needed to be level-headed enough that he might trust her with the truth about himself. She would bring him to balance. She would be a source of peace and quiet.

Yes. Of course, he also hoped that his wife would satisfy his physical desires, too. Still, every time he’d imagined marital intercourse—far too often for his peace of mind—he’d imagined it as a rational endeavor. Heated, of course, and pleasurable, naturally. He had no problem with pleasure regulated by reason. But sexual congress was supposed to leave his head clearer at the end.

When he’d met Mrs. Farleigh, he had wanted time to consider her. She’d seemed…possible.

She was beautiful. She was intelligent. And most important of all, she challenged him. She hadn’t believed all the folderol about his perfection. She was the first woman in a very long while who had seen through the claptrap of his inexplicable success to discover that underneath, he was still just a man like any other man. He needed someone who could turn to him and say, “Sir Mark, you are failing, and you must get yourself under control.”

Mrs. Farleigh might have done. He’d begun to hope that she was the woman he’d been waiting for, no matter what the townspeople said.

But now it was quite clear that he would have to discard that hope. There was one way in which Mrs. Farleigh was completely wrong for him. She didn’t calm him. No; she enflamed him. When he let his eyes flicker shut, he could see the fall of her eyelashes, the look she’d given him over her shoulder. He could see the pink of her lips, her mouth opening to his. He could still taste her sweetness on his lips.

She made him smolder. She took his logical thoughts, and instead of arranging them in calm and clean order, she shook them until he could not tell up from down, right from wrong—could only think in terms of her and not her.

No. Despite her intelligence, despite the connection he felt to her, there was no question about the matter. She was wrong for him. Utterly, completely, and in all other ways wrong.